I understand where you are coming from in that link. Would it not be true that you could recalculate your BMR every week or month to compensate for that initial plateuing? Not saying eat less though, I'd rather burn the calories in exercising - does that make much of a difference?
Just quick point on BMR.
Steve's link is talking about " maintenance calories " - which is what I think you are trying to nail down. BMR represents the calories just to keep you alive - think coma.
So, you may be confusing BMR with " maintenance calories ". Maintenance calories " is made up of calories to support your BMR, plus a bump for RMR, plus calories for your digestion, plus calories for your daily actvities, plus calories for exercise and any post exercise bumps in metablolism. And as far as BMR goes, noticeable differences in BMR are usually associated with changes in your lean body mass ( i.e muscle ). Assuming your calorie defcit isn't prompting any starvation reponses on the one hand and you aren't exercising very intensely mon the other it's unlikley you'd see substantial changes in BMR on a week by week basis due to ' sensible ' dieting alone.
I'm always too obsessed with the numbers myself and I like to have a formula that I can use to predict results, and then see the results happen (in everything not just weight loss). The main reason I'm bringing this up is the vast difference in the calorie estimations... It seems to me if the 1800 calorie estimation was right, then if I followed the 5000 one I'd actually gain weight. It's just confusing. Also I feel like yeah, I'll lose weight for now cause I'm more active and I'm consuming less, but that might not have anything to do with the accuracy of those numbers anyway
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My sense is, some of these calculators may not be as well suited to situations where body fat is a
substantially large component of body weight. I would suspect that these ( BMR ) calorie calculators must have been developed with some assumption of what a person's lean body mass / body fat % range is. Normal healthy body fat % for men is about 15%, and I'd read that the average for most men is about 23% body fat. Remember, in some cases the BMR's are calculated only using height, weight and age. And the other thing to remember is that BMR caloires can account for almost 70% of all the calories you need in the day ( depending of course on how active you are ) and is greatly influenced by the amount of muscle mass you have. So the more ( or less ) muscle mass you have, the more of an impact you'd expect that change in mass to have on BMR estimates
For example, someone who is 25, 6' tall, 180 lbs and 15% bf ( this % is healthy normal ) would get the same calculated BMR than someone who is 25, 6' tall, 180 lbs and 34 % bf ( this % is overfat ) . Thing is, the first guy has about 150 lbs. of lean mass, the second guy about 120 lbs of lean mass. Does the difference in 30 lbs of mass makes much of a difference as to whether the calculation is spot on or not ( as to how many calories you need for BMR ) ? Hard to say. There's an old gym chestnut maxim was that a pound of muscle burns 30 - 50 calories per day. Some say it's more like a pound of muscle only burns about 6 calories a day. Add to the fact that some say 1 pound of fat burns about 2 calories a day. So, anyway you look at it, you could argue that higher bodyfat %
may overstate BMR calories requirement calculations...by how much is open to debate.
I think the calculators mayalso be misleading when not only the body fat % changes, but so does the weight - for a given height. Assume for example someone is the same height as you at 5'7'' and is 190 lbs...and assume this is close to an average bodyfat % of 23% ( this is just a guess on my part ) . His lean body mass is about 147 lbs. and might yield a BMR of 1,900 calories Now, if your stats of 5'7'" and 336 lbs was also assuming 23% bodyfat, your lean mass would be almost 260 lbs and might yield a BMR of 2,900 calories. And clearly, 260 lbs of lean mass requires more calories to sustain itself than 150 lbs...so based on the extra pounds of muscle and fat at 336 lbs., an extra 1,000 calories makes some intutive sense.
But, if for example, at 336 lbs. assume you have different body fat %. In my example, the 190 lb guy is at 24% body fat, assume yours is now higher at say 40% body fat. Now your lean body mass isn't 260 lbs anymore, but 200 lbs. If you need 1,000 calories to sustain 260 lbs, why would you also need 1,000 calories to sustain only 200 lbs. ? This is where some of the calcualtions may be misleading.
Obviously, these are very simplistic examples I've given and many other factors come in to play when determining reasonable BMR or maintnenace calories " estimates " ( and that's all they are - " estimates " ). But the point I'm trying to make is that trying to be aware of what your body fat % / lean body mass wil go a long way to getting a better handle on what a reasonable BMR might be - again, for the simple fact that BMR accounts for so much of your daily caloric needs and is closely associated with how much lean body mass you have. So, if there is some way you can find out what your body fat % is, that would be some very valuable information you could use IMO.
